Herman (Hermann) friendship cake

Get the starter dough recipe, plus instructions on how to pass on this friendship cake to your friends...

Cook: 1 hour 30 minutes

170℃ / Gas mark 4

Medium

Herman (or Hermann) is a friendship cake. You can’t buy him, but you can be given a gift of him… then you can give him away. He’s chock full of yeast so over 10 days he’ll grow slowly but surely… and then you can eat him!

He doesn’t need any swanky fridge style accommodation, the kitchen work surface will do. He doesn’t even need a lid, just a tea towel. Your granny’s tea towel will do – it doesn’t even have to be new. Just cover him and he’ll merrily grow at room temperature.

To spread a little friendship far and wide, just follow the instructions below and in 10 days you will have a Herman cake to eat and four mini Hermans to give to friends and bring a little Herman shaped smile to their faces.

That said, if you want to have your cake and eat it right now, go straight to day ten and don't tell your friends! But if you wish to start a friendship chain from scratch follow the instructions below counting the day you begin as day zero.

Ingredients

Herman cake sour dough starter

250g flour

500ml milk

200g sugar

80ml water

2 tbsp dried yeast (2x packets)

Method

Today is day 0 - record the date/day on calendar

Sprinkle 1 tbsp of the sugar over the warm water

Sprinkle yeast over this and leave in a warm place for around 10 minutes so it doubles in size

Mix the milk, remaining sugar, flour and yeast mixture in a large plastic or glass container and stir using only a wooden spoon

Cover loosely or place plate over top of container so Herman can breathe and leave in a warm place

The next day is Day 1 and you now proceed with the following instructions as if you’d been given a friendship cake mixture to grow - try to stir at least once each day

Instructions for the Herman cake

Day 1: Today Herman is given to you, put him in a big bowl (at least 4pt capacity), cover Herman loosely so he can breathe - a tea towel or loose lid is ideal

Days 2 & 3: Stir Herman 2-3 times a day with a wooden spoon (be lazy – stick to wooden so you can just leave it in the bowl without troublesome corrosion issues)

Day 9: Herman is hungry again, give him the same ingredients you gave him on Day 4 - stir well then divide him into 5 equal parts, give 4 baby Hermans away to friends or family with a copy of these instructions, keep the 5th portion to bake, it's yours for the eating

Day 10: Herman is absolutely starving, he needs a holiday, he likes to go to a hot resort - the oven is his favourite so preheat to 170'C/150'C fan and grease a cake tin generously

I was given some Herman mixture 10 days ago so have been looking after it since then, gave away 4 portions yesterday and baked it today. I couldn't be bothered to grate the apples so chopped them in pieces, and added sultanas. As I didn't have the right size tin I used fairy cake cases (24 plus 10 tiny ones), and they took just under an hour to cook.The tiny ones took 30 mins. My recipe said to use sunflower oil. They were delicious. My 7 year old loves them. I'll be taking a few into work tomorrow so hope colleagues will like them!

My Herman came to an unfortunate end - my 13month old son has learnt how to climb onto the kitchen table. I walked in to find Herman spread all over the table, the wall, chairs and my son was covered! It was hard to clean up as the mixture is so sticky and smelly. Lol. The Herman cake my mum made tasted good though.

my daughter in law passed this on to me and now ive passed it to 8 people at work already and everyone has said what a fab cake it is, we all added different ingrediants and tested each others...top marks...

Yuck! if you follow the above recipe.. lacks sugar making the cake as bland as cardboard. Other sites do give a better preparation recipe. I was gutted as I had loved Herman for 9 days, tasted it and binned the rest.. it would be truely testing my friendships if I had given them these instructions lol

We've made Herman quite a few times now and he really does taste delicious. It looks like a bit of a faff but it isn't really and the end results are delicious and light. My 9 year old can now make this with minimum supervision.

hi. my mother in law and i have both have now made these. my son is alergic to eggs to we cooked it without the egg at the end. i added a little oil, the baking powder, flour and some mixed fruit and she added the cinnamon and grated apple after the oil and flour and both cakes were delicious.

We did the herman mix for xmas, and gave boxes of mix with instructions to friends and family with children, it went down really well and was a fun gift to give. The cakes freeze really well, we also tried variations with the mix- replaced the apple with nectarine segments from a tin, and the cinnamon with cocoa, to make a lovely choc orange cake. Sneeking in some choc drops makes it extra chocolately. I am going to try a carrot version in the next round.

Sorry about the last post, toddlers fingers got to the lap top! I've been given a herman cake, I'm pretty sure its dead now! My sons been poorly since last Wednesday & Herman has been the last thing on my mind, I'd already side stepped having him from my sister inlaw but somehow he arrived here anyway.

Finola, i was offered and refused one ! i couldnt get my head round my cake being made from a quarter of someone elses quarter etc etc and coudlnt stop pondering where it had been started etc and how fresh it coudl possibly be ! i realise its probably daft but coudlnt bring myself to accept it, Dawn.

The yeast might not be active by now - it's probably safer to start again. The starter recipe is above and you can get the sachets of dry yeast in all supermarkets usually near the flour and bread mixes.

if you mean the milk stage - he is quite forgiving - you could leave him in the bowl to naturally thicken a little - I left my mix out on the work top longer than prescribed - as it is made of yeast it is a living thing so will carry on thriving. Or you could just add a little more flour. This cake is yummy but i would describe more like a fruit loaf than cake so you can get away with more with it than with traditional baking.